


Director's Cut: Pastor

by aadarshinah



Series: The Ancient!John 'verse [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ancient John Sheppard, Episode: s01e01 Rising, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Rewrite, Sentient Atlantis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28244697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: Once upon a time a man so loved his city that he sacrificed ten thousand years of his life to protect it. Alone in the darkness and silence, he was eventually discovered by those who would call his city home...[An Ancient!John take on SGA “Rising”.]
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: The Ancient!John 'verse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/11336
Comments: 12
Kudos: 41





	Director's Cut: Pastor

**Author's Note:**

> From 28 November - 22 December 2020, the [Ancient!John 'verse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/11336) underwent extensive editing and revisions, but long before then I attempted a massive rewrite of the series utilizing the same essential [timeline](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359856/chapters/68660172) and background, but exploring many of the concepts I only touched upon in the original series. The first - and so far only - of these sat on my hard drive for the last four years. Until now. 
> 
> Hover over underlined words for translation.

****_ Someone I loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. _

Mary Oliver

* * *

**16 Nv | 139 AL \-- Atlantis | Lantea || Pegasus**

Like the city, Iohannes wakes slowly. His head pounds. His heart stutters. His mouth tastes of blood and bile, turning his stomach, and even with his eyes closed vertigo threatens to knock him to the ground.

Iohannes takes a deep breath. It doesn’t help.

An explosion... He remembers an explosion that shook even the _aedis_ deep in the protected heart of the city, a shout, and a surge of something so all-consuming it went beyond pain or agony...

His hands clench in memory, tearing a rough, broken sound from his throat. His eyes sting as they fly open, revealing a bright, dizzying world he can’t make sense of. It’s nearly as painful to turn his head towards the arms of the _cathedra_ but he manages it, if only barely. What Iohannes finds is almost enough to make him wish he hadn’t.

His skin – all of the skin he can see and some that he knows should have been covered by layers of leather and cloth – is singed. Still pale in places, most has turned a lurid, brutish red peppered with purple-yellow blisters and angry, pitted sores. Eschar has replaced the tips of his fingers. It’s unclear how much of his thumbs remain at all.

Iohannes doesn’t have words for the sound he makes then.

A _telum_ _..._ A Wraith _telum_ had slipped through the city shields and collided with the _apes_ plant, he remembers. The resulting explosion had sent a burst of energy coursing through all primary systems – systems he had been physically tied into through the _cathedra_.

Electrical burns, his jumbled mind realizes. The power surge had given him severe electrical burns. Which means…

Which means…

His mind fails him and Iohannes sags bonelessly against the _cathedra_. Eugenius had been here – Father and Eugenius both. They would know what happened. They would help him.

But if they could help, where are they now?

The _adeis_ is cold. The air is stale. Atlantis is saying something but his head hurts too much to make sense of it. Something is wrong, something more than just his injuries, but what?

There was a battle – but there is always a battle. This one had been going particularly badly, even before the explosion. He had been the only defense left to the city, the _funda_ and _cymbae_ going unmanned even as the city shield had been lowered to its minimum sustainable level. There just hadn’t been enough-

There hadn’t been enough.

Exodus.

It all comes rushing back – the plan to return to Terra, the arguments with Ganos Lal Gnaritatis and Melia Lucine Civitatis about leaving Atlantis behind; the look in Father’s eyes when he’d said, “Be strong, son,” before seeing him into the _cathedra_ – and Iohannes finds it impossible to breathe.

He’s been left behind – but that’s what he’d wanted.

He’s been left behind and no help is coming – but that’s not surprising.

He’s been left behind and electrical burns cover roughly two-thirds of his body. Iohannes has no choice but to help himself.

Slowly, painfully, he leans forward. On second glance, most of the burns he can see appear superficial, naught but reddened skin and blanched blisters, but there are enough third and fourth degree burns to create problems. He’s never been particularly good at healing, so he has to get himself to the _sanitas_ and into their dispensary before shock or sepsis sets in.

Okay then.

Iohannes climbs to his feet – or, rather, tries to. The moment they begin to bear weight his body-wide ache crests into another white-hot wave of agony and Iohannes collapses, twitching, onto the dais.

 _Fuck._ Just, _fuck._

“I hope you’re enjoying this,” he rasps at the ceiling. “‘Cause one of us ought to be.”

He can’t make out The City’s answer. Considering how much he hurts, he wouldn’t be surprised to find his eardrums have burst along with everything else.

“I’m going to assume that was a laugh. While you’re at it, do you mind making the room stop spinning for a while? It’s making the whole standing thing kind of hard.”

His vision continues to stream.

“I’m gonna take that as a no,” he breathes before proceeding to follow the lingering darkness into unconsciousness.

* * *

**10 Jul | 2004 CE -- Atlantis | Lantea || Pegasus**

As they draw nearer to the source of the power drain, The City comes alive. First is the air supply, sputtering stale oxygen from vents in the mosaic flooring. Next are the lights - emergency first, Alice blue and tucked into the baseboards, then golden sconces set just far enough apart for darkness to linger in between - and the door sensors. Last are the jalousies, their slats rolling upward to expose impossibly large, impossibly delicate stained glass windows to the ocean just beyond the thinning shield.

"Are you seeing this?"

 _"Yes, Rodney,"_ Elizabeth says over his headset, voice oddly muted by the unknown fathoms between him and The City center. _"You're coming through loud and clear"_

Rodney makes a face, jerking the video camera away from windows and towards the massive door at the end of the corridor. "You know what I mean." _Does The Gate have power? Is there a chance we'll be able to open a wormhole somewhere, anywhere before the shield inevitably fails?_ _Are we all going to die?_

_"No. If anything, the power loss has accelerated. Doctor Zelenka estimates that the shield diameter has decreased by another two-and-a-half meters."_

Rodney frowns this time and tosses the camera to Carson before reaching for his tablet. They've barely scratched the surface as far as interfacing their own equipment with Atlantis' goes, but it doesn't take him any time at all to realize The City isn't just bleeding power anymore: it's hemorrhaging it, and there isn't a thing he can do about it from here.

He puts his tablet away and steals back the camcorder just in time to catch the far door slide open with a silence completely at odds with its considerable size and age.

The room beyond is long and narrow. Its ceilings are tallest yet, with eight tiers of balconies overlooking the tiled main floor on one side. Unlike the others they had passed through, this space is clearly defined, divided into a series of comfortable sitting areas punctuated by holographic displays only just beginning to flicker to life. It's awe-inspiring in the way all Ancient things are, equal parts fear and reverence, and not even the desperation of their mission can quite shake the knee-jerk instinct towards wonder.

It's useless to point the camera, so he doesn't bother. He tosses it to the Marine on point and goes back to tracking the energy bleed on his tablet as best he can, only looking up when a shocked noise over the open channel breaks the odd, awed hush before giving way to dead air some minutes later. It's only then Rodney sees the crimson stain cutting across the center of the hall, as Elizabeth and the others back in The Gate Room must have.

Colonel Sumner kneels and examines the nearest. His fingers come away wet. “Someone passed this way recently.”

“That's impossible,” Carson insists even as he starts pulling a sample container and trappings out of his medical bag. "You heard the hologram when we first arrived: Atlantis was abandoned ten thousand years ago. Even the ghosts will have settled down and raised families by now.”

Rodney snorts despite himself.

Colonel Sumner ignores them both. “Myers, take Nguyen and Bates and follow the blood trail that way. Stackhouse, take Smitty and Gutierrez in the other direction. See what you can find in twenty minutes. Otherwise we'll proceed to the source of the power drain.”

“What do you expect to find, Colonel?" Carson asks as the Marines move down one of the larger aisles that run perpendicular to the main stretch of hall in opposite directions. If he's bothered by the fact he's managed to kneel in some of the less dry blood while taking a sample, he doesn't show it. "There's got to be three or four pints here. No one could survive that kind of blood loss without medical intervention.”

Moore, who Sumner had given strict instructions to _keep the civilians out of the way_ before they started out and has remained behind with them now, readjusts her firearm. “Could be an animal,” she says, probing the maculed tiles with the toe of her boot next to him. “A grizzly has twenty liters; it could probably lose a lot more than this before it was in trouble.” There's a beat of silence before she looks up to find them staring at her. “What?”

“How,” asks Carson, climbing carefully to his feet, “do you know that, Master Gunnery Sergeant?”

“Misspent youth.”

Rodney carefully moves to the other side of the bloodstain. Having the unexplored half of the room at his back seems like the safer option right about now.

Carson, rather than doing the same, only looks intrigued. It's mildly concerning, but given the frankly absurd number of things competing to see which can kill them first, his friend's frightening taste in women doesn't rank high on his list of concerns at the moment.

“Not to distract from Moore's unsurprising but no less alarming homicidal tendencies, but shouldn't we be more concerned about the homicidal tendencies of whatever caused all this blood loss? Because I don't know if you realized, but one end of the trail points in the same direction as our power drain.”

“Could the injuries have been caused by the source of the power drain?” the Colonel asks.

“Considering the amount of energy at play?” Carson glances at Rodney for confirmation. “It's likely any injuries would have been cauterized, if not immediately lethal.”

Moore considers this. “Like a light saber?"

Carson's expression turns the textbook definition of _heart eyes_ at Moore's question, which Rodney might understand if not for, again, _the unsurprising but no less alarming_ _homicidal tendencies_ in play. Instead he rolls his eyes and is surprised to find Colonel Sumner doing the same. Any further surprises are interrupted by the return of one of the scouting parties.

“We followed the trail to a closet,” Staff Sergeant Myers says in clear confusion. One hand still holds the camera Rodney tossed him earlier and he gestures somewhat pointedly with this, as if video evidence will somehow make what they'd found make more sense. "There was plenty of blood, but no sign of a struggle or indication of what direction whoever it is might have been coming from before going into the closet.”

“Well that's the second least reassuring thing I've heard all day - and that's discounting everything everything Moore has said in the last ten minutes."

Meyers' attempt at a response is drowned out by the Master Gunnery Sergeant's braying laughter. To Rodney's rapidly rising concern, Carson appears positively smitten by this. “Onward and Upward, then?”

Colonel Sumner, looking perhaps as eager to put an end to the flirtations as Rodney feels, agrees and orders the Master Gunnery Sergeant to take point. She does so with more laughter, which echoes back to them across the too bright hall.

* * *

**10 Jul | 2004 CE -- Atlantis | Lantea || Pegasus**

Radek finds her in her glass tower, the bridge between its second-story entrance and the part of The Gate Room given over to Ancient Gate control consoles partially barricaded by oversized backing crates in various stages of unpacking. It's exactly where Radek expected to find her, but he still finds himself fielding a twinge of disappointment in Elizabeth. For a woman who had been so keen to get to know as many civilian members of The Expedition as possible before shipping out, she seems equally keen to lock herself away when it looks like all their preparations are preparing to fall apart around them.

"You'll need this as well," Peter Grodin informs him, forcing a thermos into his already laden arms.

Radek shoves it all back at him, letting Peter scramble to hold the MREs and other offerings he'd thought to have him ply Elizabeth with. "Lesson one: If you start treating them like kings, you'll never be able to manage them. Now, give me the coffee and go tell the department heads to start repacking-"

"But-"

"It's been three days, Peter," Radek reminds him tiredly. "The shield is on the verge of collapse. We need to leave _now,_ while we can still draw power from The City's conduits, before we can't leave at all. Doctor Weir will see this."

"And if she doesn't?"

"She will. Now go. Standing here helps none of us."

Tried as they all are, Peter somehow finds enough energy to spare him a crooked smile. "Remind me not to ever piss you off, Doctor Zelenka."

"You already have, now-"

"Going," the Englishman promises. He does just that a moment later, pausing only to deposit his attempts at bribery on one of the malfunctioning consoles before joining Doctors Che, Ahavah, and Kununsagi on the far side of the room.

Radek watches a moment more as they exchange a few quiet words before turning back to the glass tower. Feeling the eyes on him, he slings the thermos across his chest and scrambles over the packing crates, feeling much too old and much too young for this all at once.

"You're scaring the children," he announces once he makes it past the door.

Elizabeth, to her credit, doesn't startle. She merely glances up from the laptop balancing atop yet another packing crate, raises an eyebrow, and says, "I'm sure that's not true," before clambering to her feet.

"You're scaring Peter Grodin, which is almost the same thing."

"Peter Grodin is not a child."

"He's only two years older than Brandon Nelson."

Elizabeth pales considerably. "Is he really?"

"He doesn't turn twenty-eight until December. I'm sure he'll be over his crush on you by then. If," he adds archly, "he lives that long."

Elizabeth has the honesty not to look confused by this comment. "Once Doctor McKay and Colonel Sumner are able to patch the source of the power drain-"

"We will still run out of power long before we find a way to bolster the shield. I know this isn't what anyone here wants to admit, but Atlantis is lost. If we don't leave soon, The Expedition will be lost with it."

"I see Doctor McKay's flair for the dramatic has rubbed off on you." There's a defensive lilt to her words, and Radek is pleased to see she at least realizes she's being stupid even if she refuses to do anything about it.

But still.

"I always knew I was cursed to be surrounded by crazy people. I didn't expect you to be one of them, Doctor Weir. There are eighty-six people outside this room waiting for you to make the decision they all know needs to be made. If you don't make it soon, the moment Colonel Sumner gets back he's going to make it for you. And if you think for one second that allowing the United State military to take control of this Expedition will benefit anyone, you're not half the woman I thought you were."

"Doctor Zelenka-"

The hiss and spit of static shatters the conversation, turning their attention to the laptop receiving the live feed of Colonel Sumner's team. The video still displays LOS, but the audio comes through with startling clarity.

_"Is anyone hurt?"_

_"What what that?"_

_"Doctor McKay, report!"_

_"One of the control crystals blew when I removed the cover off the control panel. The ambient temperature is about fifteen degrees, the crystals were already stressed, possibly damaged..._ _The explosion must have kicked in some sort of failsafe mechanism. Your Marines should be able to pry the doors open and we can get back to our regularly scheduled crisis."_

_"Like an elevator."_

_"Yes, like a-_ _Just open the doors_."

Radek curses and scrambles back to The Control Room.

"It wasn't me," Chuck - Charles Lawerence, Canadian signal analyst and closest thing to a RF engineer they'd thought to bring to Pegasus - says before he reaches the first hurtle. "The interference must have had something to do with the explosion they're talking about. There's a possibility that as we restore power to The City, our technology will be unable to compensate." He keeps one hand to his headset, pressing it deeply enough into his skull that Radek worries they've lost the signal again; the other juggles a pair of tablets before handing one off.

Radek takes it, grateful to find that Chuck has already pulled up the schematics for the area near the power drain. "Tell Doctor McKay-"

"Can't. We're transmitting, but it looks like their mobile transceiver isn't picking us up - they're out of range. Or we are, depending on how you look at it."

"Can you boost the signal?" Elizabeth asks. He hadn't heard her come up behind him and wonders at what point she had.

"Without destroying our headsets? I'm working on it."

Chuck darts off to one of the consoles - one that has power, but might as well be dead for all the use even those with the Ancient gene can make use of it. He's almost immediately replaced by Adi Ahavah - former Israeli Intelligence Forces, current head of the Applied Sciences department - and Che Hyun-Sook - a South Korean expat who specializes in electrical xenoengineering.

"We got lucky," says the former.

"The power drain must have effected The City's sensors as well as our own," the later adds, exhaustion deepening her already strong French accent. "Once Doctor McKay shut down the source of the drain, we were able to pinpoint their location."

There's a moment where Adi looks like she wants to question the use of _shut down_ for _inadvertently caused an explosion that shorted the electrical circuits_ , but she overcomes it manfully and picks up Doctor Che's explanation instead. "At some point while they were out of contact, Doctor McKay and Colonel Sumner passed into one of the labeled areas - as I said, lucky. I'd need Doctor Levitan to be sure, but we think it's a hospital."

"A hospital?"

"Like I said, I'm not one hundred percent on the translations, but either way we're talking a lot of big, empty rooms and a lot more small ones packed to the brim with redundant systems - electrical, water supply, data, all of it."

"A hospital," Elizabeth repeats, fingers tightening around the open laptop she carries. There's an air of vindication in her words, or what might pass for vindication if Elizabeth had ever thought to justify her actions to anybody. More than that, there's hope, of the sort that one usually doesn't allow one's self to give into.

It's infectious too, resonating in Hyun-Sook's, "The power drain was centered around one of the rooms closest to the entrance of the hospital complex, in what appears to be a casualty ward," to the extent that even the normally level-headed Doctor Ahavah seems to give the implications serious thought. "Someone may have survived."

* * *

**MISSION TRANSCRIPT :: ATLANTIS EXPEDITION**

**ELAPSED TIME 03 03 13 47 :: 2004 07 10 2213 UTC**

_[...the doors open to a dark room, approximately five meters long and three meters wide. Three of the walls are entirely given over to glass and, thus, the ocean. The floor appears to be slate, but on later inspection proves to be an alloy of yttrium, barium, copper, and Naquadah.]_

_[In the center is a hollow recess approximately one by two point five meters, filled with a liquid the color of onyx and consistency of molten glass, with a low control panel like a gravestone at its head. The blood trail ends at its foot. Shattered crystal from the fixture above fills the space between.]_

_[The camera jostles as it passes from_ DOCTOR RODNEY MCKAY _to_ DOCTOR CARSON BECKETT, _before_ MCKAY _appears in view, kneeling in front of the control panel.]_

COLONEL MARSHALL SUMNER: _[From offscreen,]_ Doctor McKay, what are you doing?

MCKAY: It's an Ancient! It's not an animal, it's an Ancient and we cut the power and they are going to _die_ if we don't get them out before they drown.

MASTER GUNNERY SERGEANT DEBORAH MOORE: _[Appearing near the foot of the recess, curious,]_ How do you figure?

MCKAY: It's the only thing that makes sense. We know they had stasis technology - they built Stargate networks across three galaxies that we know of, it isn't outside the realm of possibility they could have built a device that could keep someone alive for more millennia than any of us can reasonably imagine. The Gate activating could have triggered a reanimation sequence, and if they were injured enough beforehand to need healing-

MOORE: McKay, _[She stands abruptly, hand going to her FN P90.]_ you're talking about _sarcophagi_.

MCKAY: _[Flustered]_ What? No. _[He edges around the unresponsive control panel to kneel by its head, mindful of the crystal shards but unable to avoid some.]_ Sarcophagi are Goa'uld bastardizations of Ancient technology-

SUMNER: _[From offscreen,]_ She's right, Doctor McKay. None of the healing devices the SGC has come across-

 _[_ MCKAY _plunges his hand into the liquid.]_

BECKETT: Are you out of your mind?

 _[_ MOORE _sprints around the recess in attempt to stop_ MCKAY bodily _._ STAFF SERGEANT DAVID STACKHOUSE _and_ SERGEANT JUSTIN BATES _enter frame, attempting to do the same. Together they manage to pull_ MCKAY _back, but not before a_ MAN, _humanoid and apparently unconscious, is dragged half-out of the liquid.]_

 _[_ BECKETT _starts forward, only to be stopped by_ STAFF SERGEANT MEYERS _.]_

MEYERS: Hang on a second, doc. He might be dangerous.

BECKETT: _[From offscreen,]_ Dangerous! The man's unconscious!

MCKAY: What he is is a _real, live Ancient_! Only I'm not exactly sure how much longer he's going to be _live_ if you don't-

 _[The_ MAN _coughs himself awake.]_

 _[As one, the Marines in view raise their firearms. The sound of rounds chambering echoes, catching the_ MAN _'s attention.]_

 _[The_ MAN _raises his head, remarkably alert for having just been unconscious. He takes stock of the situation quickly, eyes darting between_ MCKAY _and_ SUMNER _before throwing out his hand.]_

 _[The Marines topple, those closest to the_ MAN _first, those farther out a moment later. The camera crashes to the floor as_ BECKETT _too falls, spinning wildly for a moment before slowing, eventually stopping so that_ MCKAY _and the_ MAN _are partially in frame. No one else appears conscious.]_

MAN: _[Hauling himself from the liquid,]_ Consauciatus es?

MCKAY: _[Dazedly,]_ You _are_ an Ancient. I knew- Wait. What about-? [ _Haltingly,]_ Quid hoc fecisti illis?

MAN: Illos stupefeci - puto. Veni, non multum tempus habent. _[Climbing to his feet, liquid streaming from his clothing in sheets,]_ Non diu stupefient. _[He holds out a hand to_ MCKAY _.]_

MCKAY: I- Quid?

MAN: Scutae cadunt. Ad cathedram imus evigilent.

MCKAY: I know that word - _cathedra_. That's what you guys called The Control Chair. Scis quod ubi? Wait, of course you do, you're an Ancient. You can take us there? _[Brokenly,]_ Scis prohibere scutam cadit?

MAN: _[Cocking his head to one side,]_ Quippe. Est quamobrem me evocaveris? Pastorem quaesivisti - liberationemque. Veni.

MCKAY: I really hope I don't regret this. _[Taking his hand,]_ Sic, imus.

 _[The_ MAN _pulls_ MCKAY _from the room.]_

_[The Marines remain unconscious, still, at the edge of frame. Beyond, the ocean continues to vie against the shield, appearing closer than before.]_

**END OF TAPE**

**ELAPSED TIME 03 03 38 19 :: 2004 07 10 2238 UTC**

_[The room shakes. Outside the windows, the ocean brightens - imperceptibly at first, then quickly as the shake turns into a full-bodied rattle that sends shards of crystal and unsecured weapons skittering across the floor. At its zenith, the shield falls.]_

_[Water rushes to fill the void. It slams against the windows, the walls, everywhere at once, and the building groans. A few of the Marines stir, but none wake.]_

_[Just as quickly, the water falls away, and though the streaming glass is a cloudless blue sky.]_

**END OF TAPE**


End file.
